Speaker Urges Others to Use Imagination for Higher Purpose

Imagination is a heavenly gift, one that holds great power, speaker and author Brent Crowe told faculty and staff at Palm Beach Atlantic University on Monday.

“I want to encourage you this morning to use your imagination for the glory of God,” said Crowe, who also serves as vice president of Student Leadership University in Orlando.

Crowe spoke to PBA faculty and staff in the Weyenberg Center as part of the Refresh Leadership Development program offered through the University’s Center for Campus Connections. He talked about using imagination based on theology, a topic that will be the subject of his forthcoming book.

He described the Bible as a four-part narrative, beginning with creation. “In creation, we see a portrait of what it looks like when God ultimately, completely and exhaustively gets His way,” he said.

What follows are the fall of man, redemption and restoration, he said. In restoration, God will have his way again, he said.

In the meantime, Christians find themselves “on the other side of redemption, still living in a fallen world,” he said. However, it is possible, he said, to imagine the possibilities presented by restoration.

The book of Genesis contains examples of the gift of imagination, he said. The first is in Genesis 2:19, where God asks Adam to give a name to each living creature, he said.

In Chapter 3, Eve also uses her imagination, but with a negative outcome, he said.

“Eve had to use her imagination to see in her mind’s eye all that Satan had tempted her with,” he said.

Crowe challenged those in the audience to consider this question: How would you dreamcast your life from this point forward?

One way to begin, he said, would be to “redefine what has become.” That involves looking at the world in new ways in light of the creation and the fall, keeping in mind that “what matters most is what God wants,” Crowe said.

The next step is to regain something that has been lost, a concept rooted in the plot movement of redemption, he said. The last step is to imagine what could be, he said.